Season 3, Episode 4
Production episode: 3×05
Original air date: October 11, 1968
Star date: 4842.6

Mission summary

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy beam down to Triacus, an isolated Federation outpost. They find sprawled out on the ground each of the adult members of the exploration party. Most appear dead, but one of them moves: it’s Starnes, who looks like he had a very bad night. Shaking and sweating furiously, he fails to recognize Kirk, says something about “the enemy within,” and then promptly collapses on the ground dead. Hmm. Upon closer inspection one woman has a vial in her mouth–some kind of poison. All seem to have died by their own hands.

All except five young children, who rush out and demand that our heroes play games with them. Tommy, Mary, Steve, Ray, and Don rush to Kirk, link hands together, and dance around him while singing “Ring Around the Rosie.” Twice.

Captain Kirk thinks he may now understand why the adults shuffled off this mortal coil.

Kirk solemnly plants a (felt!) United Federation of Planets flag, which looks like the tacky product of Craft Day on the Enterprise. But the kids aren’t interested in funerals (or maybe just crafts), and start to play tag off on their own. McCoy thinks the children are suppressing the trauma of their parents’ deaths and suggests that maybe bacteria, or some kind of chemical, led to the parents’ mass suicide. Just then Spock discovers a disturbance in the force on his tricorder from the local cave.

McCoy takes the kids up to the ship while Spock and Kirk go cave-hopping. Upon entering, Kirk is immediately overwhelmed with strong feelings of anxiety and fear. He runs out of the cave and starts to feel better, though he can’t explain it. They decide to return to Enterprise to interview the children and check out Starnes’ logs.

The kids, meanwhile, are driving Nurse Chapel crazy with their complicated ice cream demands and general sense of entitlement. Why is Nurse Chapel the babysitter anyway? But Kirk shows up and asks to join them. He mentions that the ice cream is a nice improvement from the outpost, and the kids can at least agree on one thing: Triacus sucked.

KIRK: I don’t think your parents liked it very much either.
TOMMY: Yes, they did.
STEVE: Yeah. Mine sure did.
DON: Parents like stupid things.
CHAPEL: Oh, I don’t know about that. Parents like children.
MARY: Ha. That’s what you think.
KIRK: I’m sure your parents loved you. That’s why they took you with them to Triacus. So they wouldn’t be so far away from you for such a long time. That would make them very unhappy and miss you. I’m sure that you would miss them, too.

The kids look at one another, and then start running around the room shouting “Busy! Busy! Busy!” Nurse Chapel correctly infers that they’re doing a bee impression–you know, like kids do.

Kirk picks up one of the little girls to stop the madness.

TOMMY: Can we have some more ice cream, please?
KIRK: No, I don’t think so. It’ll spoil your dinner.
TOMMY: See what I told you? They all say it.

He then sends them all to bed, but posts a security guard outside their door. (He’s babysat before, I see.) This, alas, does nothing to suppress their inevitable descent into paganism. Wait, what? The kids all share a room, get in a circle, stack their hands on top of one another’s, and start chanting. Like kids do:

Hail, hail, fire and snow
Call the angel, we will go
Far away, for to see
Friendly Angel come to me!

This seems to summon the Ghost of TV Costumes Past (GCP), glowy and green. He congratulates the children on their successful manipulations so far and gives them a further task:

Marcos XII has millions of people on it. Nearly a million will join us as our friends. The rest will be our enemies. Together with our other friends who will join us, we will defeat our enemies as we defeated them on Triacus. A million friends on Marcos will make us invincible. No one will tell us where to go, when to sleep, where to eat. The universe will be mine to command, yours to play in. To accomplish this great mission, we must first control the Enterprise. To control the ship, we first must control the crew. You know how to do that. That is your next task. And as you believe, so shall you do, so shall you do.

Are you following?

Back on the bridge, completely oblivious to this intruder and the Level 3 Summon Monster spells going on in the kiddie room, Kirk and Spock review Starnes’ tapes. Starnes speaks of a growing anxiety among the team members. Their excavation on Triacus revealed that a planetary catastrophe wiped out most life but that one race survived by hiding in the cave. (How did an entire race survive in one cave? But anyway…) He also mentions that he feels his actions are being influenced… and at that moment Tommy, having surreptitiously slipped onto the bridge, makes a fist and bangs down on the invisible air. This (or possibly the accompanying trumpet music cue) cuts the signal from the tape.

Kirk finally notices Tommy, who asks to go to Marcos XII. Kirk says it’s much too far and intends to head to his quarters to review the new information. But Tommy asks to stay on the bridge–“I’ll be very quiet”–and Kirk agrees and leaves. Mary arrives on the bridge fairly soon and then the kids get to work: Tommy uses his mind control powers to have Sulu leave orbit, while convincing Sulu that he still sees Triacus on the viewscreen. Uhura catches this but Tommy gets her, too. Out of orbit and on their way to Marcos XII, Tommy and Mary smile approvingly.

In auxiliary control, Don is pulling the same stunt on the nameless worker there. Mr. Scott asks him why they’ve changed course, and the man insists that they haven’t changed course. Some man-wrestling ensues and Scotty is dispatched to the realm of the unconscious.

I swear, even the most powerful aliens we’ve seen so far didn’t have this easy of a time taking control of Enterprise.

In Kirk’s quarters, Spock and McCoy are reviewing Starnes’ other log tapes. Starnes says that he found himself requesting a transport from Starfleet, but couldn’t figure out what the transport was for–he was being controlled somehow. He instead tried to send a warning to Starfleet, sure that the only thing they could do at this point was to destroy themselves: “Alien upon us. The enemy within!” (He’s clearly confusing this with a much better episode.) Spock thinks possession is possible:

SPOCK: Possible, Captain. Evil does seek to maintain power by suppressing the truth.
MCCOY: Or by misleading the innocent.

Hey… misleading the innocent! I think we’re onto something. Kirk asks about the history of the planet–maybe it has some clues about what drove all those people to suicide.

SPOCK: According to the legend, Triacus was the seat of a band of marauders who made constant war throughout the system of Epsilon Indi. After many centuries, the destroyers were themselves destroyed by those they had preyed upon.
KIRK: Is that the end of it?
SPOCK: No, like so many legends, this one too has a frightening ending. It warns that the evil is awaiting a catalyst to set it again into motion and send it marauding across the galaxy.
KIRK: Is it possible that the evil found the catalyst?
SPOCK: I was speaking of a legend, Captain.
KIRK: But most legends have their basis in fact, Spock.

Most? Really?

Anyway Kirk is suddenly concerned that this evil presence is here on the ship so he orders a new landing party to relieve the men on the surface. They might have some clues about what’s going on.

In the transporter room, two redshirts (wave goodbye…) are beamed to the “planet.” Kirk orders the security officer to beam up the previous detachment, but no one appears on the transporter pad. Kirk activates the bridge monitor screen (does that ever come up again?) and they discover they are no longer orbiting Triacus–and that the men he beamed down to the planet are now dead.

Kirk contacts the bridge but they are, of course, unaware that anything is wrong. He rushes to the bridge and finds the children chanting again, and the GCP appears:

GCP: Friends, we have reached a moment of crisis. The enemy have discovered our operation, but they are too late. They no longer control the ship. We do. We shall prevail. They will take us any place we desire. Go back to your stations. Maintain your controls. If resistance mounts, call upon their beast. Their beast will serve us well.

Their…beast?

GCP: The fear in each one of them is the beast which will consume him.

Ah, gotcha. He warns that if the Enterprise crew decides to be all resistance-like and follow in the footsteps of their parents, the kids have permission to go Triacus on them.

Kirk commands Sulu to set course for Starbase 4, but all Sulu sees on the viewscreen are giant knives, like some horrible Food Network reality show. He won’t budge. When Kirk tries to use the controls himself, Sulu pushes him away warning that they’ll all be destroyed. Kirk orders Uhura to contact the Starbase, but Tommy transforms her console mirror (??) so that all she sees is an old, haggard, dying version of herself. Crippled by fear, Uhura cannot do anything. Kirk then orders Spock–trusty, reliable Spock–and Spock asks, “Captain, why are we bothering Starfleet? […] The bridge is under complete control.”

Now Kirk is beginning to panic. He approaches Mr. Leslie and tells him to remove Sulu from duty. But everything Kirk says is gibberish. Only Spock is able to make out some of it, and with focus, come to grips with himself. Kirk, however, is beginning to lose it. Spock manages to break free enough to get Kirk and himself off the bridge.

They head for auxiliary control and find that Scotty, too, has succumbed to the children’s mind control. They try to man-fight their way through to the console but are rebuffed by Scotty and the other engineer. Kirk and Spock retreat and regroup in the corridor. Though it’s difficult to admit, they finally come to terms with the fact that the children have some kind of evil inside of them and unless they can dispel that evil, they will have to kill the children.

Right on cue, Tommy arrives with Chekov and two other guards. Chekov, looking particularly nervous, says that he has received a communique from Starfleet and must arrest both Kirk and Spock. Kirk tries to get through to him but to no avail: the only way to solve this dilemma is some man-fighting. Kirk and Spock win, and Spock takes the men to the detention center while Kirk goes to regain control of the bridge.

There he confronts Tommy (who’s in his chair!), daring the boy to summon the GCP again and prove that he’s not afraid. He cites the total absence of the creature as an example of its fear and powerlessness. Tommy still refuses to help, so Spock plays back the chant of the children to force the appearance of the GCP.

The GCP is a little confused by this–how did Kirk summon him?–but no matter, he insists that Kirk will lose and that his followers are obedient little witches. He also explains why he can’t take over the adults in the same way:

GCP: I would ask you to join me, but you are gentle, and that is a grave weakness.
KIRK: We’re also very strong.
GCP: Ah, but your strength is cancelled by your gentleness. You are full of goodness. Such as you cannot be changed. You are like the parents. You must be eliminated.

So that’s what Starnes meant by the enemy within! Men need their gentle side! (Shush. I am going to pretend that it’s an example of continuity and not bullshit.)

Kirk then replays for the kids some videos of them on Triacus playing with their parents, having fun. Then they show images of all their parents dead. Ouch. This seems to break the GCP’s hold on them, and they all begin crying. Kirk forces them to look at the GCP:

KIRK: Don’t be afraid. Look at him. Without you children, he’s nothing. The evil remains within him.
GCP: I command you! I command you! To your posts! Carry out your duties, or I will destroy you! You will be swept aside to make way for the strong.
KIRK: Look how ugly he really is. Look at him and don’t be afraid.

The kids are sobbing now, and the GCP has begun melting like a bad souffle. He disappears in a puddle on the ground, and all the illusions–the swords, the ugly version of Uhura–disappear.

McCoy arrives on the bridge–the lucky bastard managed to escape most of the episode–and finds the children crying. He is delighted by this because now they all finally heal, or maybe he just hates kids.

And then they all live happily ever after. I mean, except the newly orphaned children who will soon discover they killed their own parents. Happily. Ever. After.

Analysis

Demonically possessed evil children try to destroy mankind? What is this, a documentary? Kids can be righteous little brats1 so I didn’t find the premise here to be particularly disturbing or unusual. What I did find disturbing and unusual was the mass suicide at the beginning–a fantastically creepy nugget of an idea that went absolutely nowhere. *shakes fist*

That said, these kids were creepy. It’s no “Children of the Corn” but the emotionlessness with which they committed themselves was unsettling. Though it was cut from the final production, the kids originally chanted sing-song rhymes in order to effect their powers. To Sulu, Tommy says: “See—see—what shall he see/ His ship ripped apart by the daggers he will see.” And to Uhura: “See—see—what shall she see…/ A dying old hag where a girl should be.” I think that sing-song incantation would have cast a much darker tint on the whole episode and been overall more effective than the ridiculous hand gesture and accompanying horn cue. I assume that the beginning with “Ring Around the Rosie”2 was supposed to set the stage for those later rhymes. We associate nursery rhymes with innocent sweetness (even if many of them are quite dark) and that would have been a great contrast to the evil in their blackened little hearts. But that went nowhere, too. *shakes fist again*

The big problem I had with this episode was how implausible it was. Why doesn’t Kirk just stun the kids with his phaser? Why doesn’t Spock nerve-pinch them? Gas the ship with sedatives? Creepy demon children should be easy enough for this paragon of leadership to neutralize. I kept shouting uselessly at the screen for someone to stop and think about how easily subdued those kids could be! And it went both ways: why don’t the kids mind control Kirk and Spock from the beginning? Forget Guy the Engineering Stand-in–go for the gold! The crew’ll follow him off a cliff anyway.

The other thing that really threw me was that Kirk, in the beginning in that cave, is incredibly susceptible to the power of the GCP–er, “Gorgan” I guess–while Spock of course is stoic and unaffected. And yet later Spock succumbs and Kirk is able to more or less resist. SPOCK? That never happens! Nothing ever came together–the “hints” I thought I picked up about where the episode was going and how it was going to play out all wound up red herrings because there was never any coherent idea. People can resist when it’s convenient and then can’t when it’s not. The kids can only control one person at a time on the bridge at first and then suddenly they can control the whole ship. What’s going on here?

While ordinarily I would have been all over the “you have too much goodness in you” bits, I found them entirely contrived here. First of all, Kirk isn’t exactly nice to these kids. He’s fairly short-tempered with them, even though their parents just died. If we had seen Kirk falling over himself to be a nice guy maybe I would have felt differently. But Kirk just doesn’t seem to like kids—any kids–and that doesn’t help the Gorgan’s case much. That whole speech felt like it was tossed in at the end as a nice moral lesson for the children who may be watching.

It does have one really great moment, though, and that’s when Kirk is coming apart in the elevator. His greatest fear is losing the ability to command and overwhelmed by that he just starts to shut down. Shatner does a great job here–he’s vulnerable, but he’s not weepy or crazy or otherwise not himself. The only that brings him back is Spock, and it only works when Spock stops calling him “Captain” and calls him “Jim.” Kirk looks at his first officer and finally feels himself again. It’s a touching little moment.

One nit that keeps nagging at me: after freaking out that he beamed two of his own men into the vacuum of space, Kirk instructs Sulu to reverse course as if they’re going to continue on their merry little way. What about the landing party that’s still on Triacus and never got relieved of duty?

1Case in point: I was on the subway earlier this week and two adorable little girls (looked kind of like Mary, actually) were chanting at one another. The first one said, “I win/ You lose/ Now I get/ To give you a bruise!” and started punching the other one. Then the other one said, “You won/ Fair and square/ Now I get/ To pull your hair!” and started pulling her hair. Children can be evil.

Eugene Myers: The opening of “And the Children Shall Lead” is reminiscent of “The Omega Glory”: the Enterprise stumbles into the middle of a tragic mess, this time the dead colonists of planet Triacus. But it’s even worse, because it turns out the colonists’ children are still alive!

Unfortunately, it does get worse. Just like the promising opener of “The Omega Glory” (truly a teaser, because it never delivered), this episode goes completely off the rails. It holds on a little longer, stringing the viewer along with the mystery of what actually transpired on the planet–but not by much. As soon as the kids begin chanting and the ghastly Gorgan/Gorgon appears, things go downhill rather quickly.

I still found some things of interest before I wanted to look away from the horrors unfolding on the screen. Watching Kirk’s uncomfortable interactions with the children, it’s hard not to compare this to similar encounters on the show, notably in “Miri” and “Charlie X.” The children might as well be aliens—Kirk even calls them as much until he realizes they’re actually under alien influence. There’s a fascinating paranoia about kids in Star Trek and television of the Sixties, best exemplified in the memorable Twilight Zone episode, “It’s a Good Life,” in which a powerful child holds his family and neighbors hostage in constant fear that they will say, do, or even think something that displeases him.

This sort of mistrust or basic dislike of children carries through to Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Captain Picard has difficulty relating to Wesley Crusher—who it turns out is also somewhat alien in nature. Compare this to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Commander Sisko’s relationship with his son, Jake, who isn’t an alien child but has one as a best friend. At the very least, we can trace Wesley and Jake’s fashion sense back to the shockingly bad children’s outfits in “And the Children Shall Lead.”

I was also struck by the reasoning behind Gorgan choosing the kids over the adults as his agents: he says the adults are “full of goodness,” too gentle to change, a surprising contrast to the media’s usual portrayal of the inherent innocence of childhood. Gorgan knows that children can be vicious creatures, though I wonder if he recruits them because they also have fewer “beasts,” or fears, at a younger age. They are also easily manipulated by promises of endless playtime, a common temptation in fairy tales and children’s stories.

What message, if any, are we meant to take away from this? The flip side of fearing children is that children also hate adults, a theme in both “Miri” and “Charlie X.” Here, the kids resent their elders because they’re always “busy” and like “stupid things,” perhaps a caution to parents today in a technology-driven world of constant distractions and demands that can distance us from the people closest to us.

Sadly, what meager subtext this episode offers is deeply buried under the ridiculous plot and nonsensical script. This is the most embarrassing takeover of the ship yet! Kirk and Spock inexplicably regain control of their senses while the rest of their crew is paralyzed by their fears, the same fears that have already been explored in other, better episodes: worry about losing command, the fear of getting old (Why does Uhura have a mirror at her station anyway? So she knows when the boss is coming?), and the fear of knives…in space. Uh. I don’t even know why Sulu is so frightened, since he collects old weapons. If the kids can control people’s minds and make them hallucinate anything, why even bother preying on them this way? Why don’t they make everyone, the captain included, do whatever they want?

I was most disappointed by the fact that Kirk reaches the children by showing them a silly home video and the “Friendly Angel” is revealed as not only a terrible actor, but grotesque in appearance. Not that he was much of a looker before, but why does evil always have to be ugly? Seductive evil is much more interesting and threatening, and harder to distinguish from good. How did Kirk even know its name was Gorgan, and why did he assume the creature is completely gone when he fades away? Playing back the chant to summon him was pretty clever though.

One scene did affect me: when Kirk accidentally beams those red shirts into space. It’s a sobering moment, more so because Kirk always suffers the loss of his men personally. Actually, I take that back: I was also affected every time those kids pumped their fists, but not in a good way; somehow I didn’t think notice the suggestive nature of their hand gesture when I was a kid, but it’s funny as hell now. Similarly, Kirk’s comment now seems slightly creepy: “Children, I have some pictures of you on Triacus…”

Eugene’s Rating: Warp 1

Best Line: SPOCK: Humans do have an amazing capacity for believing what they choose and excluding that which is painful.

Syndication Edits: Donknocking overthe UFP flag, the entire sequence of Spock and Kirk checking out Gorgan’s cave and Kirk acting anxious, Nurse Chapel helps Steve order his ice cream, some of Kirk’s speech to the kids before they run around yelling “Busy,” Kirk referring to the cave he was never in, Kirk ordering security to watch the children, a shot of the Enterprise following a commercial break.

Trivia: When Kirk’s orders to Mr. Leslie are garbled, it’s actually a sound clip of him speaking in reverse. This is what he says:

Remove Lieutenant Uhura and Mr. Spock from the bridge. Confine them to quarters. Did you hear me? Take Mr. Sulu to his quarters. He’s relieved of duty. Remove Lieutenant Uhura and Mr. Spock from the bridge. Confine them to quarters. Take Mr. Sulu to his quarters, I said. Mr. Spock from the bridge. Confine him to quarters. Mr. Leslie, take Mr. Sulu to his quarters. He’s relieved of duty.

Other notes: Melvin Belli, who plays the Gorgon, was a famous personal injury and criminal defense attorney. He was known as “The King of Torts” and won a number of victories that changed consumer rights. He famously defended (for free) Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald; Sirhan Sirhan, and dozens of other musicians and celebrities. He was cast in the hopes of boosting ratings. His son plays Steve in this episode.

Edward Lasko, the writer, wrote for about forty different shows including The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, and Charlie’s Angels (which he also produced).

Marvin Chomsky, the director, is in fact the cousin of famous academic Noam Chomsky.

Craig Hundley, the red-headed boy Tommy, appeared previously in Star Trek as Peter Kirk in “Operation: Annihilate!” He’s a musician now and did some work on the scores for the first two Star Trek movies.

Brian Toshi, who plays the boy Ray Tsing Tao, later starred in Revenge of the Nerds and as the voice of Leonardo in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. He also appeared briefly in TNG.

Pamelyn Ferdin, who plays Mary, was ubiquitous in ’60s television. She nearly got the part of Regan in The Exorcist but was passed over for being too recognizable. She was the original voice of Lucy Van Pelt in the Peanuts movies and the voice of Fern in Charlotte’s Web.

About Torie Atkinson & Eugene Myers

TORIE ATKINSON is a NYC-based law student (with a focus on civil rights and economic justice), proofreader, sometime lighting designer, and former Tor.com blog editor/moderator. She watches too many movies and plays too many games but never, ever reads enough books.
EUGENE MYERS has published short fiction in a variety of print and online zines as E.C. Myers. He is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and a member of the writing group Altered Fluid. When he isn’t watching Star Trek, he reads and writes young adult fiction. His first novel, Fair Coin, is available now from Pyr.

This was a particularly bad episode. The children’s powers — as noted — seemed strangely inconsistent and it was bereft of any real ideas, plot, or character. However I was always taken back by the two red shirts who got beamed into space. While most red shirts died fast disintegrating deaths, these poor slobs got the unpleasant vacuum kill. I always shivered at the thought of beams into space. Truly horrific and tossed away in this episode.
The direction was ham-handed as well. Once we were shown that the kid-villians could cause you to see what that wanted, (And doesn’t anyone on the bridge beside Sulu and Uhura look at he damned screen.) then we shouldn’t have seen anything directly. It would have worked SO much better if we knew Sulu was seeing things, but like Kirk we didn’t see what he saw. (Also it would have saved us from the hokey knives threatening the enterprise and the sexist age fears for Uhura.

I had such a hard time picking a picture of Jake because all of his clothes are so bad. Wes was easier because I didn’t want him in his puffy sweater, his grey “acting ensign” outfit, or his Starfleet Academy uniform. Poor Wil Wheaton.

@2 CaitieCait

I planned to mention this next week, but it’s interesting that an episode with a “Gorgon” is so closely followed by one about “Medusans.”

@3 bobsandiego

the sexist age fears for Uhura.

I wouldn’t have called her age fears sexist, but then I remembered the female officer is also the first one to fall apart in “The Deadly Years.” And it’s evident that it isn’t getting older that bothers Uhura, it’s the idea of not being attractive anymore. The two fears are related of course, but there’s a lot more involved with aging. I’m much more concerned with mental and physical deterioration than my appearance, in the long run.

5.DemetriosX

Posted October 28, 2010 at 11:30 AM

Just to get it out of the way, I’m pretty sure it’s “babysat” not “babysitted”. And Nurse Chapel probably gets the job, because Janice Rand transferred off the ship.

Anyway, there is one thing that truly makes this episode even more horrible than you have suggested. Fred Freiberger declared that he was going to “do ‘Miri’ right”. Yep, this abomination is his attempt to fix a decent episode that didn’t need much fixing in the first place. Apparently, Shatner, Nimoy and the others were appalled, feeling that “Miri” had been a very good episode. As I noted on the season 2 wrap-up, I see several other episodes this season where I suspect Freiberger was playing the same game. (Once he even succeeded! But the original was “The Alternative Factor”, so making it worse would have been tough.)

You guys have no real conception of just how ubiquitous Pamely Ferdin was. She was absolutely the go-to kid if you needed a little girl. Her only competition was probably Robbie Rist, who was the go-to kid if you needed a little boy. Melvin Belli was pretty generally loathed by everybody, but he actually did a lot to improve consumer rights. But he was an attention-whore of the first water and frequently played himself in movies.

Speaking as someone who was a child in the 60s, those costumes weren’t all that outrageous for the time. It’s horrifying, I know, but it was the run-up to 70s fashion. You know, Greg Brady shirts and stuff. But getting Wil Wheaton and Cirroc Lofton to do a panel at a con on bad costumes would be great. Somebody organize that.

6.DeepThought

Posted October 28, 2010 at 11:32 AM

One plus for the episode: we get tons of interesting shots of the Enterprise interior, including not only the transporter-room bridge view, but also new angles on the bridge control panels, and a twirly-device that Sulu apparently uses all the time to change the ship’s orientation. That’s pretty cool. Gotta be worth something.

Am I the only one who wanted to finish the GCP’s first pep talk with “So say we all?”

I am a little surprised that the transporter doesn’t have any kind of “destination is vacuum” override to prevent you from spacing your own crew this way, but I guess that’s more of a TNG feature. Besides, how else can you beam explosive devices into the void at the last minute?

One thing I did like about the ep was the reminder that fears can be paralyzing, and you can only move forward — in life, in ship de-hijacking, in whatever — by overcoming your fears, accepting them, and moving on. Fear is, indeed, the mind-killer.

Yeah, that’s the worst part of the episode–I mean what a horrible realization. And why don’t the transporters have a basic “Is there a planet? Y/N” safeguard?

I’m glad you brought up the illusion issue because I thought that was a little weird as well. I mean, I guess they can’t show NOTHING because then it doesn’t lend any credibility to the actors freaking out. But it does seem weird that there’s no consistency in terms of what appears on the screen.

@ 4 Eugene

And it’s evident that it isn’t getting older that bothers Uhura, it’s the idea of not being attractive anymore.

I don’t think that’s “evident” at all, and I actually disagree. When she sees the image of herself she doesn’t start weeping that she’s become ugly–she gets upset because she sees her own death. I don’t think that’s sexist or unusual or unfair.

@ 5 DemetriosX

Ack, thank you! Fixed now.

But… what was wrong with Miri? I mean it wasn’t the best episode ever made but it was perfectly solid and had plenty of good moments. ARGH. I hate remakes. Hates them, precious. Hollywood is run by such creatively bankrupt producers.

I think the Gorgan looks like he’s wearing a cast-off from the community theater production of Macbeth.

Yeah, this is one of those episodes where I can’t even offer a spirited defense because of when it was aired or whatever. The only saving grace is that it recognized the evil that is inherent in children, and even that is probably colored by the Elvis/Rebel Without A Cause/Comic Books national freakout.

Still giving it a two, though (fist-bumps Eugene) but that’s largely b/c I know what lies ahead.

13.DemetriosX

Posted October 28, 2010 at 1:42 PM

Torie @11:

Here I go, typing out all that trivia for you, and no one reads it!

Oops. See I got distracted by your mention that Belli defended Sirhan Sirhan and started figuring out my degree of separation from him. My stepfather worked at a gas station with Sirhan Sirhan, but I finally decided that wasn’t really close enough to be worth mentioning. And let’s face it, the three younger boys are utterly interchangeable.

And I have used some of the other amazing features! I just couldn’t get any of the quotes to look halfway decent and mere italicizing just wasn’t cutting it.

But I gave it a 2! Eugene gave it a 1! Why does he get the fist bump of solidarity?

As for the culture-destroys-our-children argument, isn’t it just that? That cultural influences corrupt our pure innocent adorable children? I felt this episode was arguing the opposite: that kids are inherently corrupt and immoral and they need parents to keep them in line, or else they’ll summon ancient evils and occupy the galaxy. I mean, granted, outside factors seemed to have tipped the scales in evil’s favor, but I don’t know that it aligns with the comics-and-stuff-are-bad-for-kids argument.

Aside: The idea that kids are innocent, pure, and fundamentally different from adults is a fairly recent (post-Victorian) cultural assumption in the West. Before that, they were just little adults, and that’s why they could work all day in the mines.

About beaming the two security guys into vacuum: People all over the ship were given illusions consistent with them still orbiting the planet. They bridge screen showed the planet, and the transporter operator saw readings of a planetary surface. It was only when they couldn’t beam up two people which they thought they had a lock on that the illusion was broken.

I remember getting a protracted disagreement over this episode back in the 1980s. Neither of us had the videotapes and there was no IMDB. I tried to tell my pal that the Gorgan had been played by Melvin Beli. He refused to belive it. I insisted that if he looked up the episode he’d see the guest actors name. He insisted it was just someone with the same name as Melvin beli but not the lawyer. The whole thing devolved into somethig about as smart as the episode itself when he began insisting it was someone with the same name and who even looked like Melvin Beli but was not the famours lawyer.
ahh my favorite memory attached to this episode.

17.NomadUK

Posted October 28, 2010 at 5:34 PM

I loathe this episode heartily, for all the reasons given. It’s hard to come up with any new ones at this stage of the game.

I’m glad someone else thought the UFP flag was pretty naff. I mean, you get buried on an alien planet — a pretty dismal one at that — and all the Federation can give you is this shitty felt flag? With all the technology aboard Enterprise, I’d’ve thought it would have been no great trick to crank out an obelisk or something.

And what is it with Federation housing estates for their personnel? I mean, talk about bleak. It’s worse than Slough. I think I’d kill myself, too, if I were stationed there.

And I don’t blame Kirk a bit — I don’t like those kids, either! Annoying little buggers.

The Gorgon’s costume, I always assumed, was meant to be some sort of angel-type thing. He’s the ‘friendly angel’, after all.

I also always assumed that Sulu wasn’t really seeing knives, but something terrible that was simply being represented by the knives — because knives in space are so ludicrous that he couldn’t possibly have been frightened of them.

And, finally, let’s not forget that Fred Freiberger rode to the rescue of yet another sci-fi series, Space: 1999, with similar results. The guy was a menace.

Well, that’s about all the invective I can muster for this utterly mediocre bit of rubbish. Third season. Sigh. So it goes….

18.WonderGirl

Posted October 28, 2010 at 7:24 PM

As I recall, once my dad, thinking of this episode, said that he’d give me a dollar if I could recite the “hail, hail” rhyme from memory. (Wanted to make sure that I was maintaining my geek cred, I guess.) I walked away with the money, of course. . . .

I am known somewhat for my filky-ness, and perhaps even more so for my structured poetry. If you ask nice, I’ll send you my “Star Wars: A New Hope” sonnets. I wrote seven sonnets which describe the course of the film. :D

And I still can’t find anything good, useful, or interesting about this episode. It’s really just dreck.

20.CaitieCait

Posted October 28, 2010 at 7:32 PM

Oh, and I always thought the Angel’s costume was a flowery sheet of the kind hairdressers use to keep bits of hair out of one’s clothes.

Though I like having instant access to the internet on my phone and laptop, I miss blown-out debates like this. I recently argued with someone about some Star Trek trivia at a convention, and she literally asked her phone the question and found the answer in seconds.

@17 NomadUK

Perhaps the Gorgan’s power extends even to the audience at home, showing us one of our worst fears: a brilliant science fiction show reduced to utter crap.

@18 WonderGirl

And I trust no creepy “angels” answered your summons? It’s like daring someone to chant “Bloody Mary” three times while staring into a mirror…

It’s pretty clear that the transporter operator thought there was a planet there–my beef is that the transporter machine itself didn’t set off a little WARNING: VACUUM alert as a redundancy for human error.

@ 17 NomadUK

The music is awful. The horn cue! AGH!

The flag literally made me laugh out loud. I can only imagine that they were sitting there, ready to shoot the scene, when the propmaster realized “Oh SHIT we didn’t make a FLAG!” So they cobble that together from like, the wall insulation of the production trailer.

I also wonder why anyone would go on these deep space expeditions. The death/insanity rate seems pretty high, if you die you get either no funeral (“The Man Trap,” “The Naked Time”) or a crappy funeral (here), and you don’t even get nice digs.

Apparently the knives were supposed to cut up the Enterprise (but I guess that wasn’t in the budget?). Not that that makes sense either…

@14 Torie “But I gave it a 2! Eugene gave it a 1! Why does he get the fist bump of solidarity?”

Er, because I can only keep two thing in my head at a time, so I just assume that the number I agree with is Eugene’s (works most of the time.)

*sheepish fist bump*

“I felt this episode was arguing the opposite: that kids are inherently corrupt and immoral and they need parents to keep them in line, or else they’ll summon ancient evils and occupy the galaxy.”

Hrm. You could argue either way, and even at the time they probably did. Whether kids were inherently corruptable (by energy beings in shower curtains or whatever) or inherently corrupt makes little difference.

@17 Nomad UK “I mean, you get buried on an alien planet — a pretty dismal one at that — and all the Federation can give you is this shitty felt flag?”

I’m assuming that Starfleet was on a third season budget…

@21 Eugene “I recently argued with someone about some Star Trek trivia at a convention, and she literally asked her phone the question and found the answer in seconds.”

That’s what sold me on the iPhone. I had a friend who had gotten one through work, and we got confused about the definition of various electronic components, so I grabbed her phone and looked it up on WikiP. A week later I got my own.

24.Notmaker

Posted October 29, 2010 at 1:53 PM

I’m not sure why Gene Roddenberry was scared of children in the way that he appeared to be, but thank goodness that trend didn’t persist too badly into later TNG and DS9 episodes.

25.Lemnoc

Posted October 29, 2010 at 6:12 PM

Worst. Episode. Ever. IMO. Spock’s Brain is riveting by comparison. Slow and almost incomprehensible in execution.

Others have already mentioned how inept the quasi-military of Starfleet was in subduing a boatload of mean children. The moment of transcendent absurdity for me, though, is how a slideshow of the kids’ dead parents could evoke a more emotional response than the kids being alone with the cooling, rotting corpses of their dead parents on Triacus. Why would photos later, of what they’d already seen, trigger tears?

If the kids were inclined to feel anything for their parents at all, wouldn’t they have expressed that on the planet? Not later, based on Kirk’s PowerPoint presentation.

It’s the data disks for the ice cream that always killed me. Nurse Chapel actually had in her hands a disk for “chocolate wobble and pistachio”. And when Stevie added peach to that mix, she simply took out the first one and put in the “chocolate wobble and pistachio AND PEACH” disk.

The mess hall on Star Trek confuses me. Is this machine making food for them from actual ingredients or creating them from patterns a la the replicators in the TNG-era? Once they talked about the cook making turkey for Thanksgiving, so I assumed they had a kitchen staff somewhere on the ship, but there’s no way they could fill all those food orders instantly. If it were like an automat where you could select prepared food, that might make sense, but the whole ice cream thing indicates you can ask for any weird thing and get it instantly.

It’s not so much a slideshow as home videos, but yeah. I think it “works” then because Kirk has instilled doubt in the kids by suggesting the Gorgan is afraid of showing itself. But that’s using a very loose definition of “works.”

@ 26 bobsandiego

Oh god, the close-up of his costume… cape… THING is just terrifying. The glitter!

@ 27 ccradio

OK, so maybe I’m weak, but I thought the ice cream data disks were awesome and I wish I had an ice cream data disk machine right now. And all the time. I don’t know what “wobble” is but it looked delicious.

@ 28 Eugene

I assumed it was like an automat, where there is prepared food that you request via order cards.

32.CaitieCait

Posted November 1, 2010 at 7:11 PM

@30 Eugene: I’m sure Ensign Granger (a distant descendant of the original, and one of the few Wizard-born to decide on a career in Starfleet) will have something to say about it, her ancestor surely having seen to the Emancipation of all Earthbound house elves long ago.

Now I want to write a protest filk about that. A song about Ensign Granger, and her lonely crusade to free Starfleet’s house elves.

The argument that Kids are corruptible will, of course: be echoed even more painfully in ‘Way to Eden’; What with Kirk and his apollonian ‘Great White Father’ act openly disdaining the painfully caricatured dionysian space-hippy ‘young people’ and their Leary/Manson-ish (and virulently Toxic no less!) Leader, Dr. Sevrin.

I’d argue that both of these (painfully bad!) episodes were artifacts of the surprisingly conservative and parochial paternalistic mores of the “pro” technology culture of the period**;
Always sad and suprising in the otherwise somewhat visionary philosophies of Trek.

**I’d argue it that is;
If it weren’t so painfully pretentious to do so, of course.

I had always counted this as being the Single Worst Episode of ToS, period,
(mostly on my personal squikkiness with the voice of child actress Pamelyn Ferdin, whose golden tones can induce a suicide attempt from fifty feet)
But was suprised that ‘Eden’ was in fact: much more difficult to sit through.

I watched the next episode last night. (Cheating I watched it on Blu-ray with the enhanced effects. Yeah I’m bad.) I’m playing a game with myself seeing if I can guess how Torie will react and what rating she’ll give it…..

Hi there! Sorry about the delay, your comment got stuck in the spam trap. I haven’t seen “Way to Eden” yet so I can’t comment on it, but I wholeheartedly agree with you on the paternalistic moralizing re: technology. Though I really enjoyed “The Ultimate Computer”, it buys into the rhetoric that technology is evil and can’t be trusted and needs a chaperone.

I feel like there was another episode in which that really bugged me but it’s not coming to mind right now…

I still don’t see how this could be the worst episode, though. At least it had a semicoherent plot.

1. As mentioned, Kirk’s “I’ve lost control” loss of control. A nice insight into the character, with a reasonable amount of scenery-chewing by Shatner (and just the right touch from Spock/Nimoy to pull him back).

2. As mentioned, the horror of having inadvertently spaced some red-shirts.

3. I actually liked Sulu’s whole knife phobia. Yeah, it’s crazy, but it’s just the sort of “be scared of stuff” illusion that kids would conjure (and that would create a visceral reaction alongside a nice mental push of anxiety); heck, Sulu might be more vulnerable to it due to his martial/fencing interests. (I also like Scotty’s, “We’d be lost, forever lost!” speech.)

4. But the only one that counts: as a kid when first watching these eps, I got a serious crush on Pamelyn Ferdin. She was dreamy …

The rest was truly awful, but I’ll still rewatch it today, if only for Pamelyn …

Pamelyn was also in the 70’s live-action kids SF show, Space Academy. I remember that show so now I feel old.

47.Ludon

Posted November 16, 2010 at 2:12 AM

Just a few comments here.

On the kid’s costumes. I got the feeling that Tommy’s costume was his pajamas. That could fit with the idea of the kids ‘living’ free of their parents. And, while the costume patterns are odd, the patterns in the fabric are in line with what kids wore in the late 60s. Stripes. Plaids. Even stripes and plaids together. Anything to get away from the white shirt establishment. I have a grade-school picture of me in my plaid sports-coat. What a hoot.

Jake’s costumes. Within the context of the show, I can be forgiving of Jake’s costumes because he’s a child / youth in a multicultural environment. He’s trying to fit in. Would I want to wear his costumes? No. Give me my old sports-coat.

The kids feeling that their parents didn’t care about them. Had this episode been blessed with better writing, better directing, longer duration and being created and shown ten years later it could have made a stronger point with this story element. The dialogue cited at the beginning of this review was probably as far as they felt they could go within the context of the series and the times. In the movie Over The Edge (1979) we see what can happen when the tension suggested in that dialogue is left unchecked and is even exaggerated by actions on both sides of the generation gap. There is no Friendly Angel driving their actions. it is their own monsters being agitated then breaking free. Back to this episode. Establishing the monsters growing within the kids then establishing that the Gargon was feeding off of their monsters could have made the episode a little more interesting. I’m not trying to defend this episode, I’m just trying to suggest what it could have been.

Sulu and Uhura’s reactions to the visions. As I have stated in the thread on the other site, I had concluded that their visions were from their nightmares – probably from childhood nightmares. That could explain the strength of their reactions.

Thanks for explaining about the kids’ costumes! They do look like pajamas or comfortable play clothes. It makes sense, since the fashions of the future were naturally influenced by trends in the 1960s. *shudder*

I haven’t seen Over the Edge, but I will now that I know it exists. I really wish this episode had spent some time trying to play with the abandoment theme rather than just give it lip service. It just makes the failure even more disappointing when there was so much potential to say something interesting.

Also, good observation about Sulu and Uhura’s nightmares, though I still don’t see why Sulu would be afraid of space knives, even on a subconscious level. However, as a navigator, he might be terrified of something in space that he can’t steer the ship through, and a labyrinth of giant knives is certainly more of threatening than an asteroid field…

I guess a fair question is what the nature of the kids’ control over the grups actually is. Is it merely emotional manipulation (“You’re calm!” “You’re terrified!”), is it a basic suggestion (“Everything’s going along as normal!” “There’s something really scary out there!”), or is it a detailed illusion (“The planet is right there on the view screen!” “Giant space knives!”)?

In the former cases, which seem to tie into the Gorgon’s feeling of dread and response to emotional states, the individual pulls in the details (“despair -> this is the end -> I’m dying of old age and disease” “Loneliness -> I feel isolated from all the others -> I can’t understand a word the Captain’s gabbling at me” “Fear -> We’re in danger -> I knew I shouldn’t have stayed up late watching that sword and knife-filled ninja movie marathon last night but I know I’m the only one who can maneuver us past this gauntlet of swords and knives!”).

Or maybe I’m over-analyzing a fairly awful and poorly thought out episode.

“… I still don’t see why Sulu would be afraid of space knives, even on a subconscious level.”

Sulu seems to be fixated on edged weapons. We saw his fencing prowess in Naked Time and his Samurai nightmare in Shore Leave. (actually, that last one heavily implies that he’s a weapons nut in general.)

And yeah, Over the Edge is worth your time. The Rebel Without a Cause of the seventies.

51.Ludon

Posted November 16, 2010 at 11:42 PM

@48 Eugene and 50 ChurchHatesTucker

The navigation aspect is a good point and that could be why Sulu saw the knives on the view screen.

After giving your comments some thought, I still think his reaction could be based on nightmares or an early life traumatic experience or both. His interest in edge weapons could have developed during his efforts to grow beyond his fears. And now he’s confronted with those fears which might even have been amplified for good measure.

I like this idea of nightmares. I don’t know I ascribe them to particular nightmares Sulu has had, but I feel like they’re just the kind of thing that kids would find scary and would assume adults did, as well. Since they can manipulate thoughts in addition to creating illusions, I suspect they just instilled the fear of the knives along with the illusion of them, thinking it was a reasonable fear.

53.Sloublues

Posted January 18, 2012 at 2:13 PM

There has been a huge Space Hand that managed to immobilize the ship. There has also been a zillion-mile-long Space Amoeba that could have devoured the ship. So at this point, giant Space Knives are almost par for the course, and Sulu freaking out about them is quite understandable.

I guess I would freak out if I saw giant space knives too. Regular knives are bad enough. But why is this a particular phobia for him? If Gorgon saw that Sulu likes antique weapons, knives and such, why would he focus on that as a source of fear? Unless Sulu has always been afraid of knives and his hobby is just a way of facing it…

55.Lemnoc

Posted January 18, 2012 at 4:39 PM

I think if Gorgon had really wanted to freak out the Enterprise crew he’d have had them all imagine themselves in Tommy’s stripey jumper.

56.Robert B

Posted August 28, 2015 at 9:33 PM

Just watched this for the first time yesterday. I actually didn’t think it was as bad as people had built it up to be. I certainly don’t think it’s the worst TOS episode. If you told me I had to watch either this one or The Alternative Factor again, I’d pick this one in a heartbeat.

Regarding the Uhura thing, my initial thought was likewise “wtf, she has a mirror at her console?” However, in a later, wider shot in which Kirk is trying to talk sense into her, you get a view of pretty much her entire workspace and you can see that there is in fact no mirror at her console; it’s only there in those close shots that I assume are meant to be from her POV. So I think it’s safe to assume that the image in the mirror, AND the mirror itself are all part of the illusion.

I liked this episode. The premise was creepy and funny at the same time. The kids were creepy. I’m not a very demanding viewer. I can see where the inconsistencies would bother viewers who want to dot every i and cross every t. But we all know the Starship Enterprise is not real to begin with, right? I guess the explanation of why the kids killed their parents could have been better, but when you’re working with forty-some odd minutes, there’s only so much you can do. Did I enjoy it? Yes!